Tuesday, January 12, 2010

In today's comic, we see stupid people acting stupid in front of other stupid people, for our amusement. I am not sure that "abusing dimensional analysis" can really count as a hobby for Randall, at least as portrayed here, unless "college degree and a few years selling shirts on the internet" are now enough qualifications to teach science.

I think at its heart there is a funny idea in the center of this comic, something centering around a guy who is totally convinced that "England will drift out to sea." Perhaps in part because it is an island already, and it could move a few inches every century without consequence (maybe it is? I don't remember, the examples they always give are India or Mount Everest or something). And I think using italics for it was good - you probably know that I am a fan of judicously placed italics (but I will not work an example in here because i am just that classy).

Still, on the whole, the comic doesn't add up for me. Perhaps if he had shown some of his work in the equation you wouldn't need comments like "I'm interested in knowing if the math works out." As it is, you have to take a seemingly random equation on faith, or do the work yourself. I think it's funnier to know that Randall actually put in effort to finding random data that ends up equalling pi, but beyond his say so you wouldn't know it just from reading the comic.

Then, of course, he hits you with way too much info in panel two - the jump from "here's an equation" to "it must be a fundamental law" is important to the comic (otherwise he couldn't draw the conclusions he does later) but it's thrown in with little emphasis. In part, that's because the students ignore it, and jump into asking questions about implications, where you are already on your next set of stupid-people assumptions. When Randall has pacing problems, it's usually taking too long with what he's writing; today, I think he speeds through his content too fast.

Also, in the "realistic dialog SMACKDOWN" report, I don't think anyone would say "but what if they build a better prius?" to that question. "better" would be a Prius with laser beams that could shoot at crappy drivers. "More fuel efficient" is the natural way to ask why he is asking.

And of course, the alt-text is a gigantic let down. Perhaps if he had made some sort of hyperbolic "earth's pressure rising and killing us all!" joke as the main joke, and then the thing about England drifting off to sea as the alt-text, it could have worked better.

--------------------other news:

Even though Aloria sucks at blogging, I let her do it because she is very rich. In fact, Rich Uncle Aloria is the only person who responded to my recent demand for presents, sending me a Dinosaur Comics shirt along with a note that I smell like the inside of an old lady's handbag. This is true, there was actually such a note in the package. thanks, aloria? Anyway to keep things creepy she also demanded a photo of me wearing the shirt, and so I have uploaded one here:

also the new motto of this blog is "cool shirt, lame pants!"

---------------------------------Still seeing how ads on the site are working out, still looking for feedback. If anyone's worked with Google AdSense before and wants to give me any advice, that would be awesome. If anyone is super bored and wants to double check that I am not violating their policies that too would be great. In a related note, in order to appease the gods of Google, I CAN NO LONGER SELL FIREARMS THROUGH THIS SITE. THIS SITE IS NOW ONLY ABOUT WEBCOMICS, NOT A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN BUY FIREARMS. we all have to make sacrifices.

Posted by
Carl

106 comments:

Being somewhat familiar with Dirac's large numbers hypothesis, I found this a bit humorous. I don't know if he was thinking of it but to me it seems it is one of those "if you are not familiar with the subject matter too bad" jokes.

Granted, that's a personal prejudice of mine. I realize it can be done well, and I've seen it done well, but Randy does absolutely nothing interesting or new with it here. NOTHING. It seems like meta for meta's sake, and it just comes off as trite. Calling it meta might even be giving him too much credit.

Wasn't amused in the slightest. I frowned in the first panel and the frown increased with each new panel, until by the end of the alt-text my face was one giant frown. Yeah, yeah, I see what you're doing and I'm not impressed.

I like the new one, it's like "Composition of Pac-Man", but even more self-referential.

Speaking of self-referential, I decided to make this comic, which would totally be eaten up by xkcd fanboys if Randall made it. But, I was first! BTW, you may notice I'm making a gallery of my xkcd edits. There's not much yet, but I'm currently trying to master the GIMP image editor, so there's bound to be more of them.

"This is one of his (many) strips where it strikes me that the XKCD description ought to actually be 'The most intelligent thing you'll read today.'"

I think he accidentally typed "most" instead of "least."

Also Randall didn't label the damn axes on the third panel. Ugh this comic is just awful every way you look at it.

I actually really like metahumor if it's well done. Randall did not do it well in this comic. In fact this is probably the second to third worst example of metahumor I have ever seen.

And people actually think this is funny? HOW? Gee, if this is funny, I can't wait for Randall to post a comic that just has a sentence that says "This comic is not a comic but a sentence explaining that it is not a comic." IT WOULD BE THE PARAGON OF HILARITY APPARENTLY.

688 was actually a relatively clever instance of self-reference. A potentially good addition to Randall Munroe's Picture Blog of Mildly Interesting Ideas.

Except for the title text. The god damned title text.

Sentence 1: Insult the reader by explaining the comic. Fuck you too, Randall.

Sentence 2: Rephrase your explanation in terms of graph theory. Not that it adds anything, but of course if people understand graph theory they'll go apeshit for the comic now, right? Right? A tried Randall trope--"moderately obscure and therefore 'funny'".

Sentence 3: Express the idea behind the comic yet again. Take any cleverness used in constructing the comic version entirely out of the picture.

Insults, arrogance, repetition, cliquism/elitism, and a profound misunderstanding of how to write. Yep, that's xkcd for you.

It's arrogant that the alt-text follows the theme of the entire comic by explaining what the comic does, AKA "Self-Description"? Alrighty then...

Anyways, I think the first example is lame as hell, probably because I've seen so many funny pie chart jokes on the internet already and it's not clever at all. The second graph is pretty funny, and third is meh.

this is a good example of randy making a (for lack of a better word) naive joke and having his audience responding in kind.

what i mean is, if you're a fan of comedy and you're intelligent and responsive and aware regards humour, you've seen this done a million times, and it's not really funny anymore.but if you're not, then this is the bomb wow excellent work randy hor hor.

i guess it ties in with taste? the more experience you have and the more jokes you've heard, the more refined your taste in comedy becomes?

Carl, your definition of 'realistic dialogue' seems bizarre to me. Yes, what the character means is 'more fuel efficient Prius', but what a normal person will say 9 times out of 10 in that situation is 'better'.

This is one of the many points on which Randall simply can't win any more. If the dialogue is clunky, you criticise it for not being realistic as it doesn't flow. If the dialogue is natural, you criticise it for not being realistic because it's not accurate enough, or because real speech isn't appropriate for a comic. It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if you'd notice if xkcd returned to its former glory (as does the fact that two of my favourite comics are on your most hated list).

"It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if you'd notice if xkcd returned to its former glory (as does the fact that two of my favorite comics are on your most hated list)."

Now I'm sure this isn't what you meant, but because you said they were your favorite comics without actually explaining why they're good, it sounds like you're saying here that Carl is unable to be objective because he disagrees with you.

Yeah, Carl is Mind-Numbingly Lazy and only gets the posts up a little bit before the new comic goes live. If there isn't any good discussion to be had based on the blog post or the comic in question we tend to just discuss the next comic.

OK, that's fair. I should say why I like the ones Carl doesn't. I think the 'stalker friend' one is absolute genius. I don't share Carl's apparent belief that Randall thinks this behaviour is desirable or good and as a result I think it's a pretty damning and very witty criticism. And the 'guy with two hats' one is also a personal favourite. I understand the criticisms, but for me the art was clear enough that I got what was going on straight away (which seemed to be one of the biggest problems Carl had with it). Aside from that, what I liked about it was that it did something xkcd really struggles to do - made a character joke. I thought it was snappy and well done. Now I fully appreciate that that is just my opinion, and a lot of people probably thought both of those were just awful. But it seems to me that this site has now got everyone into the habit of overanalysing every single thing xkcd puts out, to the point where a lot of people simply can't enjoy it any more. I'm going to put it out there, xkcd was never THAT good, and it's not THAT bad now. I think if you took comics of the same quality as the supposed 'golden age' or whatever you crazy kids are calling it and released them now, they just wouldn't stand up to the level of scrutiny that Carl puts in. Artwork, dialogue, pacing, layout, characters (or lack thereof), Carl's belief that everything in xkcd is at least three-quarters autobiographical - there's always something to complain about, and that one thing seems to always be enough to ruin it completely, for ever.

Just my two pence. I'm not the biggest fan of xkcd, but it's a mildly amusing way to pass a minute three times a week, and I think some people here can't see the wood for the trees.

The biggest problem with that theory is that Carl, and myself, and a lot of other people, used to be big fans of XKCD. You'd need to come up with a reason that we spontaneously started disliking something we used to be big fans of. You'd also need to explain why, looking back on a lot of the old comics, we still like them and think they are great.

Wow, I've known that XKCD sucks for a while now, I've been reading xkcdsucks for only a little less but what Mr. Munroe did this one leaves me with no choice but to renounce this comic publicly.

XKCD has been bad but it's never been as bland. This looks like something that would come out of a particularly unfunny 4chan thread. I know I've stayed though the Secretary series, the awful Firefly fanfic and the cartoon vagina event. However, that's it. I give up on you, Randy. I give up!

P.S.: The funny this is, it might be xkcdsucks that has kept me reading XKCD for so long.

Overanalyze? Seriously? That gets you upset? I would have thought it's pretty inoffensive, given that it describes an actual phenomenon. Not like my own personal bugbear 'phallocentric'.

So do you genuinely go back and look at old xkcd with the same eye as you do new ones (with not even a hint of 'ah, those were the days')? And if so are the old ones genuinely better in terms of pacing, etc? I go back and I see a lot of stuff like the binary heart, suggesting to me the fall from grace can't have been that dramatic...

"I wonder how accurate the other two panels are. Knowing Randall they're probably very accurate."

"This is my first post. I'm a music and liberal-arts major, and despite my professed hatred of math, I LOVE the mathematical mind of xkcd - it's my secret solace. I also love the fact that about one out of every two xkcd comics require me to look something up before I get the joke."

I love how xkcd simultaneously prides itself on being so quirky and different while bitching about how society doesn't understand. I ran into this a lot in college-- dudes talking about how much better they are because they can build robots and do multivariable calculus, then turning around and pitching an emo pity party because "the world doesn't get people like me."

you know, it's not a bad thing for something to make you go check something out if you want to fully understand, however maybe the reason the "mathematical mind of xkcd" is that person's "secret solace" is because the math isn't that hard to get, sure Randall never shows his work or anything, but think about it, how many times in the 'good ol' days' of xkcd was the math overly difficult to figure out?

On a few other notes, the xkcdexplained for this post's comic (687) gave an example of how the comic could be improved slightly, and by that I mean I would have preferred a punchline like “All spheres and circles in the universe would simultaneously grow proportionally, which leads us to the subject of Universal Expansion…” simply because it's not necessarily trying to make a lame joke like what we got with England drifting out to sea and instead is simply just making a natural transition to another topic.

A note about 688, kinda bland and made me sort of mad, which sucks because it means I end up putting too much energy into a comic that does not deserve that kind energy directed towards it. I've never had a good experience with self-referencing humour, and if I did then I would've remembered it simply to use it as a comparison of "the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it"

In response to the post about 687, actually a good amount of private high schools will let you teach with just a college degree (and somebody pointed out before that dimensional analysis could come up in HS). 687 was better than average, and I also approved of the italics use.

688, on the other hand, just wowed me. I was moved to tears at how utterly bad this comic is. Indeed I cannot recall having been exposed to something so bad in my lifetime. It will be the height of disappointment if we don't get to see a good post tearing this one apart.

Overanalyze? Seriously? That gets you upset? I would have thought it's pretty inoffensive, given that it describes an actual phenomenon. Not like my own personal bugbear 'phallocentric'.

It's an offensive term. It suggests that, for any given topic, there's some appropriate level of analysis, and then someone's exceeded that level. It's nearly anti-intellectual, in the implicit message that analysis is a bad thing, destructive and pointless. Clearly you're not supposed to think about XKCD, you're just supposed to read it and go "Holy crap I recognize that math!!!!!!!!" and buy Randall's shirts.

The weaksauce ass-covering of "Dude when you go looking for flaws you're GUARANTEED to find them" is...similarly dumb. Especially when you consider its universality--any criticism that mentions flaws must be invalid, because the critic was looking for them. A true appraisal would be a careful cataloguing of XKCD's successes, and the only mention of its flaws would be for the sake of balance.

Timofei, I thought that this image was hilarious and I don't think I'd seen it before. However, a lot of credit has to go to Penny Arcade for their always hilarious drawing. Good job though.

Here where I live (america) we don't usually distinguish much between "england" and "britain" though I know that the former is a subset of the latter. I can't, however, keep straight the difference between "Great Britain" and "The United Kingdom" though I think "Great Britain" is larger? In any case, I gave Randall a pass on that one for a few reasons: The aforementioned interchangeability of the words (here, at least), the fact that his equation uses "english channel" so to refer to "england" later is more consistent, and the fact that I think "England will drift out to sea!" is funnier than "Great Britain will drift out to sea!"

Once I started reading 688, I got shocked, because I thought the first panel was pretty much EXACTLY the same joke as the "Portion of this pie chart that looks like Pac Man" pic, but only later I realised it's not. Thing is, I like the IDEA of the strip, because it takes the "self-description" thing to a completely ludicrous, pointless extreme; it's nerdist taken to its absolute absurdity, and trust me, I like absurdity. There's one problem, though:

Neither Randall nor his fans seem to see the absurdity, and they see such an empty, pointless demonstration of "intelligence" (notice the quotes) as something laudable. This strip, if done by somebody else other than Randall, would almost certainly be a satire, a downright mockery of nerd culture; being an xkcd strip, though, it's mere ego masturbation. It's a shame: if this strip were indeed sarcastic and purposefully pointless, I'd love it.

What's so bad about "Then England will drift out to sea"? The worst is that it's less precise than saying Great Britain would drift out to sea. The whole of Great Britain drifting out to sea is the most likely way that England would drift out to sea. Also, if one watched from France, one would see England drifting out to sea.

Fernie, that's actually why I think 688 isn't that bad. The gag in the Pac-Man graph is that the proportions in the graph are entirely arbitrary, and the first panel sets up that expectation. The later panels then subvert this.

Rob, at first I thought those subcultures must be few and far between because I couldn't think of many examples, but then I realized that's the point. They're not the sort who cares if the world knows they don't care about whether the world knows they don't care about the world. Do you think the nerds who are into self-referential humor whine as a form of self-referential self-parody?

I always admire a subculture which can actually just say "yeah, fuck the world" and not turn around and complain about how the world doesn't like them. Nerds suck at this.

I think this happens more in gender-imbalanced nerd communities, where the nerds actually need something (dates from girls) from the non-nerd community. Groups of nerds which have relatively equal numbers of men and women, in my experience, don't have problems with acceptance from the outside world.

"Rob, at first I thought those subcultures must be few and far between because I couldn't think of many examples, but then I realized that's the point. They're not the sort who cares if the world knows they don't care about whether the world knows they don't care about the world. Do you think the nerds who are into self-referential humor whine as a form of self-referential self-parody?"

There are some people who do, but nerds by and large, not so much.

A lot of the alt subcultures, by the way (and I use 'alt' here super broadly to incorporate goth, punk, hipster, etc), are usually pretty decent at saying "fuck the world" without subsequently turning and whining that the world doesn't like them. Not universally, but for the most part being liked by the world is not on their agenda.

"Groups of nerds which have relatively equal numbers of men and women, in my experience, don't have problems with acceptance from the outside world."

Possibly, but those groups of nerds also tend to not have a very "fuck the world" attitude, in my experience. I might be wrong here.

So you don't think there's an appropriate level of analysis? I have to say I disagree. That's not to say I'm against analysis - far from it. But nevertheless there comes a point when you have analyzed something as much as is useful, and further analysis will only have you going round in circles. Or, to look at another example, in literary criticism I think people often read far more between the lines than is actually there (IMHO people are especially bad at doing this to Shakespeare). I think the word overanalysis is appropriate a lot of the time. I'm not saying you shouldn't critique RM's comics, or his technique, just that the analysis seems to have overtaken some people such that they analyse the comic before they read it, when in my view it should be the other way around, or read things into the comic (like RM's motives and aspects of his personal life) that simply aren't there.

I also (surprisingly) disagree with your second point. Or, more accurately, I think you missed mine. Yes, when you go looking for flaws you're going to find them, because everything has flaws. But I never suggested that's a reason not to look, nor that it makes any criticism invalid. I'm trying to say that the extent to which you guys now look for flaws, and more importantly the primacy you give that activity, mean that it's much more difficult for any of you to like an xkcd than it was before this website started.

Just as an example, look at comic 42, which Carl says is one of his top 10 from 1-200 (when xkcd was good). I honestly believe that if this one came out now, Carl would say: 'This is ok, for xkcd. But 1) the joke's been done [I've seen it done elsewhere, so I dare say he has] and done better; 2)the art's rubbish - look, he's got a dent in his head, his arm's not attached and if the dialogue didn't say so I wouldn't know that was meant to be a golf club; 3) the alt-text adds nothing and it's not funny.' Then I'd reckon either of the following rants would be outside bets for inclusion: 'I just saved a bunch of money'? no one talks like that!; no Randall, neither you nor any of your friends ever threatened anyone with a golf club, because none of you have any balls. God I want to punch you in the face.

"So you don't think there's an appropriate level of analysis? I have to say I disagree. That's not to say I'm against analysis - far from it. But nevertheless there comes a point when you have analyzed something as much as is useful, and further analysis will only have you going round in circles."

Except, no one uses "overanalyze" to mean that, even if I agreed with you on this point. People use it to mean "you shouldn't analyze this." I've never seen it used to mean "some level of analysis is okay, but you have gone beyond what is useful."

"Or, to look at another example, in literary criticism I think people often read far more between the lines than is actually there (IMHO people are especially bad at doing this to Shakespeare)."

You aren't a literary critic, are you?

When analyzing any piece of art, you are going to find stuff that "isn't actually there." Take some of the stuff I've written, for instance. I have had stories where people read them and highlighted some imagery and symbolism they thought was really great. The only problem is I didn't put those in there intentionally. They spotted something that wasn't really "there" to begin with.

So where does that leave us? Does that mean that their finding is any less useful, because I never intended for it to be found? Does deconstructing a story that I've written and looking at some underlying themes that I was not thinking about at all when I wrote it go too far? Is that overanalysis?

Even assuming I didn't put it in subconsciously, is the point of analysis only to find what the author wanted you to find or what the author put in there?

The point of literary criticism is not just to find what the author was trying to say, or meant to say. It is trying to find what the text says, and what we can glean from the text. The worst thing an author can do when someone is trying to criticize him is explain what he was thinking or what he intended or say something like "well, it was never intended to be subjected to this level of analysis." Or, more commonly, "I just intended it as an amusing thing, it doesn't have any deeper message."

Everything anyone can ever say has a deeper message. What does it mean that I used those words in that order? What exactly am I trying to say? What's the subtext?

Even ignoring the volumes you could write about pacing and art, word choice is incredibly important. You can write pages about a single sentence, its connotations, what it means when placed into different contexts, how the change of a single word can completely alter the narrative thrust of something.

With Shakespeare, the genius is not that he intentionally sat down and wrote all of these clever subtexts into his writing. Writers generally don't do that. When I write I usually think of two characters that I think would have interesting interactions.

No, the genius of Shakespeare is that despite it being hundreds of years later, there is still useful discussion to be had from reading his work. His observations on human nature, society, characters, and so on are not just interesting for the time in which they were written (there are plenty of notable examples of this), but interesting for society right now--on top of being interesting for the time in which they were written.

Everything a writer does is a choice. What if X character were male instead of female, or vice versa?

I read once that EA Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" can be read with the assumption that the narrator is female. It is an utterly fascinating way to read the story. It is almost certainly completely unintended. Is that overanalysis? Or is it allowing the text to inform a situation it never planned for by making trenchant observations about gender and human nature?

Even utterly mindless entertainment can be analyzed with incredible depth. Take any of the movies in the genre of "stupid American comedy." You could take them apart line-by-line and see what it says about society, about the audience, about the author. You can look at pacing.

If it is possible to over-analyze, where does one draw the limit? I would say that the only way you can over-analyze is to start writing things that you don't actually think are true. That is, if you are only filling space. But even then, that is more disingenuous analysis than it is overanalysis. I could have nothing to say about something and write a disingenuous paragraph about it; this doesn't mean that it is excessive: maybe you could write three pages of text about the same thing and still not be finished.

"I'm trying to say that the extent to which you guys now look for flaws, and more importantly the primacy you give that activity, mean that it's much more difficult for any of you to like an xkcd than it was before this website started."

This is not indicative of overanalysis so much as it is a basic side-effect of changing your paradigm. See, if you read something with the assumption that it is good, you are inclined to like it. You will gloss over its foibles, you will make excuses for the bad ones and assume that they are outliers.

if you read the same thing with the assumption that it is bad, you will notice the flaws--not because you are actively looking for them or "overanalyzing" but because you already think that it is bad. You will be more willing to apply a critical eye to it.

I would argue that assuming something is bad is much closer to a neutral perspective than assuming something is good. Are there XKCDs we would have enjoyed back when we liked it that we don't now? Certainly. There are several comics where we have said as much: "I probably would have liked this one when XKCD didn't suck." Does that mean that our criticism is invalid? Not in the least.

See, a negative expectation merely means you are more receptive to flaws. It is possible to go into something expecting it to be terrible and to come out enjoying it.

"A lot of the alt subcultures, by the way (and I use 'alt' here super broadly to incorporate goth, punk, hipster, etc), are usually pretty decent at saying 'fuck the world' without subsequently turning and whining that the world doesn't like them. Not universally, but for the most part being liked by the world is not on their agenda."

I wasn't just thinking of those that turn and whine that the world doesn't like them, but also those that turn and make sure the world doesn't like them for it.

As for the literary criticism, I don't think unintended symbolism is usually any more meaningful than any other coincidence. Did Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett die two days after Ed McMahon because that would be three celebrity deaths in three days and things happen in threes? Did this create a domino effect that killed Billy Mays within a week? Or was it just a coincidence?

I think reading "The Telltale Heart" with a female narrator, watching "The Wizard of Oz" while playing "Dark Side of the Moon", or Duchamp's readymades are essentially new, derivative, works. Poe's work isn't saying anything about gender and human nature, the person who suggested reading it with a female narrator is.

It is very important to keep in mind that when you read something you are not reading Edgar Allan Poe when you read The Tell-tale Heart. He has written the words, past tense. He is no longer a part of the conversation. It no longer matters what Poe is trying to say. What matters are the words on the page in front of you, and how you are reading those words.

Why should unintended symbolism be any less meaningful than intended symbolism? It can be much more revealing.

Indeed, why does the author's intent color anything that you read? Imagine that a random character generator managed to produce a brilliant short story, and it was given to you to read. You are told nothing about the author. You read it and are suitably impressed. You admire the symbolism. You love the imagery. And at no point did any intention besides random chance touch this story. How is that different from a short story written by human hands?

Why should we devalue coincidence, if you are going to be so crass as to call unintended symbolism and subtext coincidence? The author's intention means absolutely nothing. You are reading words that have already been written. If you can find value in the author's work, in the symbolism he did not intend, then that has value.

That is what literary criticism is all about. Finding value. Finding meaning. Finding subtext. Finding. You do not find things that are out in the open. You find things behind locked doors. You find things in dusty forgotten attics.

A work can take on entirely new meaning and value due to events that the author could not possibly have foreseen. Does that have no value? It's a mere coincidence--and yet a simple event about which the author knew nothing and over which he had no control can completely change the way a text reads. Does that not have value? Should we only look at it in the eyes of the author? Do you really want the world to be so dull? It is precisely the things the author did not intend that give a work life beyond the moment where the author puts pen to paper. A story takes life when there is an audience.

A play that I wrote was performed recently. The girl who was playing the female lead had a completely different take on the character than I did--and it was wonderful. This is one of the best parts about theatre: two people can take the same character and make her completely different. Different productions can do completely different things with the exact same words. Does this make the words less important? Does this diminish the playwright's role in having written them?

It is certainly true that a poorly written play fails to come to life. A thing which is poorly written will rarely contain any unintended symbolism or accidental imagery. There are no interesting subtexts to speak of. A thing which is poorly written does not spark thought or analysis. People do not look at it from new angles to try to get as much as they can out of the text. And yet here you are limiting the work to only the author's intentions, as if the work is not what creates these pieces of unintended life.

Rob: Surely the author's intent must matter to at least some degree. For example, if I made a blogpost where I said "Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff" sucks because of its sophomoric (and often nonsensical) jokes, its poorly-written dialogue, and its ugly art, and explained why all of these things make the comic terrible, and gave all indication that I was being completely sincere, you'd (rightfully) think I was an idiot, wouldn't you? And yet all of what I said is true, the only reason I'm an idiot is because I didn't take the author's intent into account.

Rob is already covering this pretty well but for those who don't know, the kind of thinking he is deriding is called the "author fallacy" which states that a work can ONLY be viewed within the context of the author's personal beliefs and experiences. It is a fallacy because this is a complete load.

Knowing what the author wanted to express and personally believed is nice, but his works exist OUTSIDE of who he was, and thus are completely irrelevant to what the work has to say.

Actually I read about a good example of this a year back or so. Most people here have read Farenheit 451, a story by Ray Bradbury. For years and years, schools have been making their students read this story, and what has been the major theme taken from it? "Censorship is evil and bad."

So cue an interview with Ray Bradbury a few years back when someone mentioned this and he immediately denies it. "No! Farenheit 451 has nothing to do with censorship! It's a story about how television will make everyone stupid!"

Does this suddenly make the censorship interpretation invalid? Is Ray Bradbury's view of his story the only correct one? If it is, why?

Oooh, here's a good example. Covered bridges. People take pictures of covered bridges and they're considered to be scenic. But the bridges were built with only one intention: to help people cross rivers or chasms. If the intent of the creator is all that is valid, doesn't that mean people cannot interpret them as beautiful works of art? After all they were not created with that goal.

Then you get to the art world with people like Duchamp and Andy Warhol and it becomes abundantly clear that the creator of a work has zilch to do with the meaning of the work itself.

Way Walker, I don't care what you think, but I thought that whoever decided one day to listen to Darkside of the Moon and watch The Wizard of Oz at the same time should be given a huge pat on the back. I also like to think his/her reasoning was such "hmmm, should I watch The Wizard of Oz, or should I listen to Darkside of the Moon? Oh hell let's do both, an example of the best work from either medium meshed together, what can go wrong?" and as far as I am concerned, nothing went wrong because it's kind of cool to mix things that were not originally meant to be done that way

'Knowing what the author wanted to express and personally believed is nice, but his works exist OUTSIDE of who he was, and thus are completely irrelevant to what the work has to say.'

'Then you get to the art world with people like Duchamp and Andy Warhol and it becomes abundantly clear that the creator of a work has zilch to do with the meaning of the work itself.'

That's not true. And it's not even consistent with the rest of what you wrote!

'Rob is already covering this pretty well but for those who don't know, the kind of thinking he is deriding is called the "author fallacy" which states that a work can ONLY be viewed within the context of the author's personal beliefs and experiences.'

This is true (except I've only heard it called the intentional fallacy, never the author fallacy.) But rejecting that kind of thinking ("the author's intention is the ONLY THING that matters") doesn't logically lead to, "the author's intention is not important at all." That is an extreme.

It's important to remember that art is just another form of communication. Communication of some idea. If you respect an author, it's probably worth your time to figure out what they meant with a text. If you take some other meaning from it, then that's great, and if you think your interpretation is especially worthwhile, then maybe other people would find it worthwhile too.

It's really no more complicated than that.

When you get into discussions like this, things can get pretty murky. There are people who don't know what they're talking about, people who are pursuing some kind of agenda, and some people who are just nutjobs. And there are reasonable people. I'd take some of the comments in this thread with a grain (or shaker) of salt.

"If you respect an author, it's probably worth your time to figure out what they meant with a text."

Sure. But it's important to read it as just another interpretation. The author's intent, thoughts, feeling, on her own work does not occupy a privileged position that is somehow automatically more valid than another interpretation.

Okay yes I messed up on the name. It is more correctly referred to as the "intentional fallacy."

And no, "the author's intention is not important at all" is not an extreme. The work DOES exist independently of the author. Once he writes it, his interpretation is no more or less valid than any other critic's. The author can of course comment on his own work, but his comments are in no way superior to someone else's. They do not take precedence, and if someone finds a meaning in it that the author did not intend, EVEN IF the author himself says "No I did not intend that" it doesn't matter. The author has absolutely no say-so in how people can read what he wrote.

As I said, the life of the author, his personal beliefs, can be nice and give a bit of insight into what he MAYBE meant, but it's not the absolute definitive authority. Indeed, it's not even an authority at all, since again, the author is not the only person who can say what a story is supposed to mean. A story can mean different things to different people, and as long as they can back up their statements with examples from the text itself, it's valid.

I'd like to add that also if you want to believe that the author's intent is of primary importance then that means that we can never analyze or know the meaning of anonymous works like say, Beowulf or the Epic of Gilgamesh or even some of the books of the Bible, because we don't have an author to define them.

Of course it's an extreme Nate. Or are you one of those people who think Authors are a channel through which some silly spiritual muse flows? Probably not, but you know what? Once you hit send on that comment, your view on what you meant are no more valid than anyone elses, so I can at least behave as if the comment infers such a silly idea.

s'funny how you lit-crit kids are coming away from reading derrida or barthes or whoever saying the author is no more important than anyone else, and then for your next class, researching Johnson's opinion on Shakespeare's plays because well Johnson had some interesting things to say about them.

i mean, forget the AUTHOR, his interpretation is no better than anyone else's. but the CRITIC, well now! the critic really understands the work you see and is worth listening to.

i fully agree that the author doesn't deserve a privileged position on the basis of Being The Author, but he does on the basis that he's spent an awful lot of time working on and thinking about the text in question.so your bashing of the idea of any intention, any sign of a unified consistent mind producing the work as opposed to a chance collection of symbols and suggestions, strikes me as a bit...much.

I agree that the author's intent isn't of primary importance. As a simple example I imagine a debate where the argument put forth by one speaker actually supports his opponent. However, I don't think it's completely unimportant since I also don't discount the context in which it was written. One of the reasons I liked the earlier xkcd comics better is entirely down to author intent; now that he does it more like a professional they take on a different tone. After quickly reading what Wikipedia has to say about the intentional fallacy, I don't see why the author's intent should inform the work any less than "any historical knowledge and past expertise or experience with the kind of art being interpreted: its forms and traditions". Why should the works of Shakespeare be more important in interpreting the works of Beckett than Beckett? "Born in the U.S.A." is not blind nationalism.

I think Beowulf is an interesting example. From what I can tell, some of the discussion about it centers around whether the Christian elements were original or tacked on later. The intentional fallacy would say that this is irrelevant. I've also seen it pointed out that the author and his audience would've known that Wealthow's trust would later be betrayed, but this fallacy would say that only our knowledge is important. Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it didn't seem to be at odds with the original intent.

I suppose the difference is in the example of the random number generator creating a beautiful picture. To me, that is a dead thing with no life to it. You say that by tying it to the author's hand I kill it, but I say that's what gives it life. Pollock's works are more interesting than a can of paint I tipped over by accident.

Cam: I think you misunderstood me. I love the Dark Side of Oz. I wasn't using "derivative" in a negative sense, just the technical sense.

Someone mentioned covered bridges. I disagree that the only intent of the creators was to create passage over water since they often include decorative touches, at the very least painted in more than one color. But I also consider the picture to be a work in itself. We could say it's a derivative work, but it's not the original work. Duchamp's Fountain and Trap are not a urinal or coat hooks.

"This is what literary criticism is all about. Finding...You do not find things that are out in the open...Finding."

I heartily disagree. Literacy criticism, and indeed all supposed 'quests' for meaning, whether in art or science etc, are about the creation of meaning. Creating meaning. Creating value. To use the word 'finding' suggests that this 'truth' sits there and it is up for you to discover it; it gives it a sense of objectivity and depersonalises the process. You do not stumble upon some sort of meaning in a work, you create it. Each reader (or viewer, or listener, or whatever)engages with the text, as well as myriad and varied other influences (e.g. historical context, literary context, life experiences etc) and negotiates value and meaning. Through this rhetorical process, meaning is created, not found. Meaning in this way exists in the realm of the contingent; it is not something objective to be discovered. I think from the rest of what you wrote, you would agree.

The post above me is clearly an attack on established religion. The poster clearly respects such things, as the capitalization of "Jesus Christ" suggests but he or she has grown weary of the establishment and instead wishes people would think on their own and develop a more personal relationship with God.

Or he or she is just blown away by how ridiculous this conversation has become. Clearly xkcd isn't even near interesting enough this week to be bitched about.

well Way Walker you were right, I did misinterpret what you were going for, but on the topic of who's view is correct (;P) I viewed your comment as a negative, and the Pink Floyd fanboy in me erupted in a fury of typing, well ok it wasn't that bad but I did view it as a negative and I strove to defend the point, just because I could >_> <_<

"Once you hit send on that comment, your view on what you meant are no more valid than anyone elses, so I can at least behave as if the comment infers such a silly idea."

Oooh, nice strawman! But sorry, I did not say "You can interpret anything in any way whatsoever and it's completely valid!" I said that the author's intent is not of primary importance or superior to all other interpretations of a work.

If you want to interpret a work as meaning something, you have to be able to back it up with the work itself. For example I can't say "The novel The Color Purple has an underlying theme that Hinduism is the one true religion" unless I can provide examples from the novel that this is valid. If I can't provide even a single sentence that this could be true, then it isn't a correct interpretation.

You can infer anything about my comment once I hit send. Let's assume that's correct. However unless you can back it up with facts purely from that comment then it isn't valid. At that point your only defense is to say "Well then it was meant to be sarcastic or ironic" but even then you must prove that it was meant to be such. The burden of proof always lies with the person who lays charges.

The reason I said "let's assume it's correct" is because a comment I make is completely different from literature. While open to interpretation (otherwise politicians wouldn't be able to use weasel words), statements a person make about themselves or their own personal beliefs USUALLY aren't subject to the same rules that a fictional work by the person would be due to their nature.

"i fully agree that the author doesn't deserve a privileged position on the basis of Being The Author, but he does on the basis that he's spent an awful lot of time working on and thinking about the text in question."

Except that the text exists outside of his life, which is why we can still look for meaning in Shakespeare even though he isn't around to tell us what his intent was.

Fuck it, Rob is a hell of a lot better at explaining this stuff than I am, so I'll leave it to him. I'm probably just making things worse.

I think I agree with everything Rob said, in that the authors stated intentions aren't total authority, and you're right, in conversation the sayer is the be all and end all, but in any creative work, if it's important to author it's often just another form of communication. I suppose the importance is - when it's something important to the author, the author knows the most about the characters and the world, while all we have is what he's shown us. I don't know how that phrasing would allow it to apply to xkcd though.And it wasn't a strawman, just a poorly done argument ad absurdum!

Cam: My favorite part is Money, especially when the sax kicks in. What are your feelings on when the new soundtrack runs out? I've heard some put it on repeat, or start it on the third lion's roar again. I just let it end.

Honestly, the entire reaction against the "intentional fallacy" is a distasteful one to me. The author matters, because the art is entirely a product of the author. The author's intention matters, because the art is entirely a product of the author's intentions. Once complete, art does not magically sever itself and become an independent entity; it remains the creation of an intentional being and to view it otherwise is asinine.

A less obnoxious reactionary position is that the author is still important for the creation of a work, but then when it comes to commentary on the work, the author is on an equal footing with everyone else. This is still bollocks, since art is communication--an act of information transfer from the artist to the viewer. The artist as the intentional originator of this information has a privileged point of view with regards to the content of that information, and there is thus commentary on art that only the art's creator can provide.

About the only point I can agree with is that the artist cannot be the sole determinant of an art's meaning, but that much is obvious as soon as you recognize art as a piece of communication, since audience is goddamn vital to comprehending the meaning of any communication. Any communication is a collaboration between speaker and listener.

The term "overanalysis" is still poisonous. Also, I'd love to imagine analyzing XKCD before we read it. Sorry, honey, that's just...no. I can't even saw "nice strawman" since it's really a pretty poor one.

Rarely do I trot out the peacekeeping role, but I'm pretty sure every argument, pro and con, is out on the table now. Neither side is convincing the other. Let's just all agree to cease and desist and STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS. I think we're forgetting the real reason we're all here anyway...

Well it all depends on the kind of mood I'm in really, I first discovered it when my cousin was over (this was around 5 years ago) and he said that someone had mixed it together and uploaded it on Youtube, so it was done with Darkside played twice. Our first reaction was kind of a "... so, uh what's going on?" but about the time On the Run started, things were starting to correlate more (eh, that's an opinion but, to us it seemed that the music and what was happening in the film were complimenting each other by that time, instead of fighting each other) and we got a good kick when Money started playing, simply because of what was happening in Oz, we found it highly entertaining.

These days, since I don't have my own copy of Oz, I continue to occasionally find it online and start up the ol' turntable in my room (can't have it any other way than vinyl :P) and usually I try to listen to it however many times it takes (depends on how motivated I am to get up and flip sides every time).

A while ago I went looking on Youtube to see if it was still up, instead I found something where someone had tried to match up Wish You Were Here with Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Now that didn't work out that well, well almost, it was successful because the walrus and the carpenter part was done while Welcome to the Machine was playing, and that seemed... appropriate believe it or not.

I love how any time an intelligent conversation springs up some fuckwit is always there who doesn't have the intellect to understand what's going on, shouting "this is stupid" and "STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS."

Someone might have said it already, but this comic involves absolutely no "finding random data that ends up equalling pi." Dimensional analysis involves setting up what are called "Pi-groups," which are used to establish relationships between variables based on units. No calculations are performed in this aspect of dimensional analysis, and no numerical data is necessary; all that is needed are the units in which the variables are measured, and this is just a Pi-group.

"Sure. But it's important to read it as just another interpretation. The author's intent, thoughts, feeling, on her own work does not occupy a privileged position that is somehow automatically more valid than another interpretation."

Wow, the logical conclusion of contemporary literary critique is that contemporary literary critiques is meaningless and without worth.

"I have never been taken with the idea of selling a gun. When you possess a firearm, you possess something of importance. If you trade it for cash, you have lost it − and the cash in your hand will soon be gone. Sell something else!" -- Jeff Cooper

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.